ABSTRACT
Marxists, theorists sympathetic to Marx, and Marxologists are divided about whether Marx thought and whether Marxists should think that capitalism or any whole social formation is just or unjust or about whether the people can properly use such terms of appraisal for whole social formations. There is no good reason for claiming that someone who accepts the class interests thesis, as the author believe the people should, must reject the moral point of view or the possibility of assessing capitalism and socialism in terms of justice. The belief that socialism is just is, moreover, fully compatible with the belief that by furthering the cause of proletarian class interests the people thereby will in fact further the cause of justice. Social democrats object to an unmixed capitalist market economy. There are, however, all the old problems about natural rights standing there before the reader unresolved as well as all the old problems with what John Rawls called ‘rational intuitionism.’.
